Biography

Early years

Hector Berlioz was born in France at La Côte-Saint-André in the département of Isère, near Grenoble. His father, Louis Berlioz, a respected provincial physician and scholar who is widely credited for first experimenting with and recording the use of acupuncture in Europe, was responsible for much of the young Berlioz's education. Louis was an agnostic, with a liberal outlook; his mother, Marie-Antoinette, was a devout Roman Catholic. He had five siblings in all, three of whom did not survive to adulthood. The other two, Nanci and Adèle, remained close to Berlioz throughout his life.

Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale

Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale (English: Grand Funeral and Triumphal Symphony), Op. 15, is the fourth and last symphony by the French composer Hector Berlioz, first performed on 28 July 1840 in Paris. This symphony is one of the earliest examples of a symphony composed for wind band.

Introduction

The French government commissioned the symphony for the celebrations marking the tenth anniversary of the July Revolution which had brought Louis-Philippe to power, for which it was erecting the July Column in the Place de la Bastille. Berlioz had little sympathy for the régime, but welcomed the opportunity to write the work because the government had offered him 10,000 francs for it. The Symphonie militaire (later renamed Symphonie funèbre et triomphale), rather than following the model Berlioz had established in Romeo and Juliet represents a reversion to an earlier pre-Beethovenian style in the tradition of monumental French public ceremonial music. Berlioz claimed to have completed the entire score in just 40 hours, harvesting much of the musical material for this Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale from unfinished works. The first movement, the "Marche funèbre", was constructed from the Fête musicale funèbre à la mémoire des hommes illustres de la France, a massive, seven-movement ceremonial piece begun in 1835 in the hopes of selling it to the French government. According to Julian Rushton, "Berlioz worked best on large projects; when he could see no future for them he preferred not to compose.”" He apparently abandoned the Fête musicale funèbre because he couldn't find a sponsor to commission it.